ye!" he responded, in sailor fashion. "You only did her bare
justice, Miss Lorton," he added. "She's a good boat."

Nell looked round at him with a gratified smile.

"She's a dear old thing, really," she said; "and she behaves like an
angel in a gale. Many's the time Dick and I have sailed her when half
the other boats were afraid to leave the harbor."

"Wasn't that rather dangerous, a tempting of Providence?" he said,
rather gravely, at the thought of the peril incurred by these two
thoughtless children--for what else were they?

"Oh, I don't know," she replied carelessly. "We know every inch of the
coast and every current, and if it should ever come on too stiff, we
should make for the open. It would have to be a bad sea to sink the
_Annie Laurie_; and if we came to grief----Well, we can die but once,
you know; and, after all, there are meaner ways of slipping off the
mortal coil than doing it in a hurricane off Windy Head. There's the
first fish! If Brownie were here, we should 'wet it'; but I haven't any
whisky to offer you."

Her low but clear laugh rang musical over the billowing water, and she
nodded at her companion as if he were one of the fishing men or Dick.

Vernon leaned back and gazed in turn at the sea and the sky and the
slim, girlish form and beautiful face, and half unconsciously his mind
concentrated itself upon her.

She was not the first young girl he had known, but she was quite unlike
any young girl he had hitherto met. He could recall none so free and
frank and utterly unselfconscious.

Most young girls with whom he had become acquainted had bored him by
their insipidity or disgusted him by their precocity; but from this one
there emanated a kind of charm which rested while it attracted him. It
was pleasant to lean back and look at and listen to her; to watch the
soft tendrils of dark hair stirred by the wind, to see the frank smile
light up the gray eyes and curve the sweet red lips; to listen to the
musical voice, the low brief laugh, which was so distinct from the
ordinary girl's giggle or forced and affected gayety.

The fish were biting, and soon a pile of silver lay wet and glittering
in the bottom of the boat.

"Haven't you got enough?" asked Vernon, with your sportsman's dislike of
"pot hunting."

"For ourselves? Oh, yes; but some of the old people of the Mills like
mackerel," replied Nell, "and they'll be waiting on the jetty for the
_Annie Laurie's_ return. Are you getting